Jessica

Vozel

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March 3, 2008

Will Saturday Night Live Gig Save Hillary’s Campaign, or Just Save Face?

On Saturday evening, senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton cancelled her campaign charter from Dallas to Columbus and paid a visit to the Saturday Night Live studio for a live “Editorial Response” to SNL’s mock debate parodying the one held last Tuesday on MSNBC. Some media outlets prematurely assumed that Sen. Clinton, by canceling her flight, was admitting defeat and canceling her campaign stop in Ohio.

But it was quite the opposite. She’s not giving up just yet, and her SNL appearance served as a sort of pop culture last-ditch effort for her.

It was an interesting choice for Clinton. At the debates Tuesday, she was met with boos when she recounted a Saturday Night Live skit in which Barack Obama – or Fauxbama as the media has taken to calling SNL Obama impersonator Fred Armisen – is given a series of softball questions while she, played by Amy Poehler, is grilled relentlessly. Perhaps she decided to appear on the show to negate that embarrassing real-life debate moment. Or perhaps she knew that putting a finger on the pop culture pulse could benefit her by showing that she’s not completely out of touch with her constituency. 

SNL has played an interesting role in politics in recent months, along with its comedic cousins, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Some people, especially young people, will readily admit that they get their political news and information solely from such shows.  Regardless of Hillary’s reasoning, it might just end up being a choice that serves her well, even if it doesn’t carry her all the way to the Democratic nomination. 

While it may seem unbelievable that a short spot on a Saturday night comedy show could propel a candidate to victory, it’s not an entirely unfeasible possibility. Richard Nixon appeared on the comedy show Laugh-In in 1968, uttering an inflected version of the show’s famous line, “Sock it to me?”  His opponent, Hubert Humphrey, said that his own decision not to appear on the show might have cost him the election. People want to see that candidates can laugh at themselves every once and a while.

In the short skit, Poehler, dressed in the same brown tweed suit as Hillary, mocks the Senator’s laugh with an exaggerated sort of cackle. Hillary asks, “Do I really laugh like that?” before agreeing with Poehler that yes, she does. She then went on to say that although she wanted to relax for the night and put politics out of her mind, she did want to send a message to Americans in “Ohio or Texas, Rhode Island or Vermont, Pennsylvania or any of the other states: Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

She also poked fun of her own flailing campaign after Poehler asked how it was going, saying: “It’s going very, very well,” before nervously asking, “Why, what have you heard?” 

Though Hillary seemed perhaps a little out of place on the SNL stage, she seemed relaxed. Human. And as her pre-New Hampshire display of emotion proved, she is at her best when she is being real and showing a slice of non-calculated humanity can’t hurt her. By pointing out that she’s not totally out of touch with the status of her campaign, she somewhat makes up for her attitude of inevitability earlier on, which contributed in no small part to her disappointing primary losses. Her humble acceptance of Poehler’s jokes at her expense, however scripted those moments were, probably caused some to consider that perhaps she’s not a calculating Ice Queen.

If her SNL appearance, fresh in the mind of Tuesday’s undecided primary voters in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island, does have any sort of substantial effect, she might also thank SNL for reinforcing in their skits that the media has been treating her unfairly. The skit preceding her “Editorial Response” did in fact portray her as a victim in the recent debates, and thus SNL gave the appearance of taking her side. Some thought they stopped just short of an endorsement. 

Time will tell whether or not Hillary will win the essential states on Tuesday. But while a short SNL appearance surely won’t make or break her (after all, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee all appeared on the show as well) it just might help to repair her broken image in the American media and save some face for her, even in defeat. 

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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